Bible Commentaries

2 CHRONICLES CHAPTER 2

Solomon appointeth workmen to build the temple: his embassage to king Huram for workmen and materials, promising to furnish him with victuals, 2 Chronicles 2:1-10. Huram’s kindness, 2 Chronicles 2:11-16. Solomon numbereth and divideth the workmen, 2 Chronicles 2:17,18.

i.e. A royal palace for himself and his successors. This whole chapter, for the substance of it, is contained in 1Ki 5, and in the notes there it is explained, and the seeming differences reconciled.

Which words may be commodiously understood from the nature of the thing, and from the following words, such ellipses being frequent in the Hebrew. Or, without any ellipsis, the sense, being here suspended, is completed 2 Chronicles 2:7, so send me, &c., the 4th, 5th, and 6th verses being inserted by way of parenthesis, to usher in and enforce his following request.

To dedicate it to him, i.e. to his honour and worship.

For the continual shew-bread; so called here and Numbers 9:7, because it was to be there continually, by a constant succession of new bread when the old was removed; of which see Exodus 25:30 Leviticus 24:8.

The house which I build is great; for though the temple strictly so called, was but small, yet the buildings belonging to it, both above and under ground, were large and numerous.

The heaven of heavens cannot contain him: when I speak of building a great house for our great God, let none be so foolish to think that I mean to include or comprehend God within it, for he is infinite.

To burn sacrifice before him, i.e. to worship him there where he is graciously present.

See Poole "1 Chronicles 2:5".

i.e. Who was my father’s chief workman. Or, Huram Abi, a man so called; the prefix lamed being here only a note of the accusative case. See more on 2 Chronicles 4:16.

The son of a woman of the daughters of Dan; of which See Poole "1 Kings 7:14".

My lord; so he calls David here, and Solomon in the next verse, either out of singular respect to their greatness and true worth; or because he was indeed tributary to them; or, at least, his country was nourished by their country, as it was afterwards, Acts 12:20.

Wherewith David his father had numbered them; for David had not only numbered his own people, for which he smarted, 2Sa 24; but afterward he numbered the strangers, not out of vanity, but that Solomon might have a true account of them, and employ them about his buildings, as he saw fit. Yet Solomon thought fit to number them again, because death might have made a considerable alteration among them since David’s numbering of them; and it behoved him to have an exact account of them.